Revenue Roadmap
Revenue Strategies for Family Law Firms
Learn from the experts behind the growth of sterlinglawyers.com Anthony Karls, President of Rocket Clicks/co-founder of Sterling Lawyers, and Tyler Dolph, CEO of Rocket Clicks, interview the experts in all the areas that will drive revenue and increase profits for family law firms
Get technical knowledge and learn from the experience of those who paid the price to learn what it takes to grow from an idea to an exclusively family law firm with 30+ attorneys.
Revenue Roadmap
Why Bad Law Firm Intake Systems Kill Your Growth
Law firm intake systems kill growth when paralegals handle calls while juggling case prep, collections, and trial work.
Most law firms fail because they treat intake as an afterthought. At Sterling Lawyers, we learned the hard way that paralegals can't be fully present on intake calls when they're managing trial prep and collections. That's why we built a systematic approach to law firm sales training and client consultation optimization that actually scales. Our legal intake staff hiring process goes through 800 applications to find one person because your intake team is your brand's first impression. The framework works: dedicated teams, systematic training, and measurable accountability drive law firm revenue optimization and predictable client acquisition systems.
This Sterling Lawyers' systematic approach solved the intake bottleneck that stalls firms at $2-5MM. Our 800:1 hiring ratio and proven training framework.
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📄 CHAPTERS
0:00 - Law Firm Intake Systems: Why Great Staff Matter More Than Ever
2:03 - The Paralegal Problem: Why Multitasking Kills Intake Performance
4:34 - Sterling's Dedicated Sales Team Model: $250 Consultations That Convert
8:29 - Client First Impression Strategy: Making Them Feel Heard and Cared For
11:08 - The 800:1 Hiring Ratio: How We Find the Right Intake Personnel
13:28 - Systematic Training Framework: I Do, You Watch Method
18:27 - Professional vs Amateur Mindset: Taking Every Interaction Seriously
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Why? Great intake staff matter more than ever for family law firms. Check out this episode to learn how we at Sterling Law were able to build an incredible intake staff and take our firm to new heights. I'm your host. Started off and with me today is Anthony Carls. He is the co-founder and builder of Sterling Lawyers, which is a $60 million law firm with 32, attorneys. They are our law firm here, at this business. And, he's currently the president of Rocket Clicks, which is our family law firm growth consultancy. Today we're going to talk about selling in a law practice, whether it's non attorney sales, whether it's paralegals or even the attorneys. What happens in that consult room, how to maximize those deals and those opportunities. Tony takes us through really five great points as it relates to to maximizing this process. Tony, always great to see you. Thanks for coming back. Yeah, I you. So today we're going to talk about sales and a family law firm to sell to, not to sell. Who's selling, who's not selling? So much to talk about here. I know, over at Sterling, we've tried many, many things, as a law as it relates to to selling in a law firm. But I'd like to start with just understanding the talent shortage in law firms. Right. As as we talk to many of our, clients and we're doing interviews on this podcast with, law firm owners, they always talk about having to be the person to start out with. When they start their firm, they're doing everything right. And then as they grow, they're having to make strategic hires, within the firm. And I think sales is is often one that's a little scary. It's a little difficult. And, it's probably because there aren't that many great salespeople in this space. Yeah. Yeah, I would agree. It's, It's definitely something we learned when we started. Obviously, I think I was the first person I was answering phones, and then we had when we hired our first attorney and, paralegal. Then the paralegal was the first person in queue to answer the phones, and then it was me, and we started saying like, oh, hey, they don't really like the job. That's not what they were. That's not what they're good at, what they or what they enjoy. And that comes up to the potential client in the conversation. It's like, it's not that they're annoyed that they're, the paralegals are annoyed. It's that they have a lot of stuff to do for the attorney. And, like, they want to make sure that gets done because it doesn't get done. On the attorney is frustrated because now the attorney looks like they're they don't know what they're doing and they're incompetent. And it's just like it's a snowball. So like the intake call becomes the last thing that we're going to deal with. Hard for the paralegal to be where their feet are. And be fully present in that conversation. Yeah, exactly. And it's so it's you know, it's really what we found is it's really very tough for us to have a team and like so we have a dedicated team, two teams actually. So it's one big sales team with the sales manager. And we have people that do intake and we have people that actually do consults that are non, non attorney consultation. Folks. And they're they both a great job. And you know where we are. And our model is all of them are paid consults. So our I believe our attorneys charge $250 for a one hour consultation and for a CLA that's a we call it a non attorney salesperson to do a parcel that's 150 bucks. So our intake team needs to be salespeople, and they need to be taught how to do sales and to be held accountable for sales. And we need to recruit for sales. We need to do all of these things that are like, it's a little different than what you would potentially expect. Yeah. So not only are we, helping our audience understand the importance, how essential it is to have great salespeople, but we you know, we have the experience boots on the ground where we try doing free consults, we try doing having the attorneys do everything. And we found this formula that has actually worked really well and taken a long time to develop, but help us understand, like, why are these, rules so essential? And how can we help empower, our listeners to, to take this leap and make their I mean, I think the I think it's actually one of the most important positions in the firm, is your intake people, because that's the first. That is very likely the first human they've been engaged with that's associated with your brand. And, like, if that's not a good experience, they're just going to go back to Google or wherever they wherever they're sourcing their list of potential attorneys to work with from. And they're going to call the next one. And it's super imperative that that first interaction is, like has a lot of quality because like, if you're treating these conversations well, you're not trying to sell something. You're trying to get the the potential client to tell you their story. And your goal as the salesperson or the intake person is to make them feel heard, make them feel like we care, make them feel like what they're saying matters so that we can then move them to the next step, which is like, okay, we built a little bit of trust. Now I want you to meet someone on our team, one of our attorneys or whatever, not attorney salespeople, so that we can help you understand what the next steps are going to look like so you can move forward through this really traumatic life experience. And that's. That's such an important point. You know, if you're doing this every single day, it may become a little numb. Or, you may not realize, like, this is one of the worst days in someone's life. And being able to have the presence of mind to be empathetic is so crucial to being successful in that Yeah, yeah. I mean, there this is probably the first time that they're talking to a stranger about all of this very personal stuff. And, like, that's a that's a monumental, like, move from a. All right. We're in the research phase and I'm like, we're going to transition into like now that's going to happen. That's and that's a that's a hard emotional state to go through. So if you do it really well, like you make your whole process better because people don't want to do that multiple times. Like that's the actual reality. So the better you are at this, the less likely they're actually going to call the next person on less because they don't want to do it again. I keep thinking about the importance of having someone who can live in that moment and be present with that person. And again, just back to the like. If you're a paralegal and you have a million things to do, is as great as you may be, it is going to be impossible for you to be like fully Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Because you're, you know, oftentimes you're you have some of that on your plate as a responsibility. You're also in charge of doing some of the collection work in charge of doing a bunch of the document preparation and, you know, trial prep and all of those things. And you're, you're you're you're really busy. You're kind of like, in all of these different realms and like this one, conversation, you kind of want to get it done if you're in that seat because, like, you have a lot of other things to do. So, like, I don't want to spend 15 minutes on the phone hearing Betty, sorry about how better terrible her husband is and how she scared for her kids and she doesn't know where she's going to live. And like all of those things, like, so it feels clinical and it feels like very, it's just transactional and you set the attorney up now to not have a great counsel. really important piece. Is is. Sometimes I think if we talk about sales. Sales can be a lot of things, right? You have your used car salesman persona that is very transactional. Just buy, buy. You never see them again. This to me, this sales role is is very much relational. It is connecting with someone and ensuring that they have a great experience throughout this transaction as opposed to like just go close another deal. Yeah. I mean, our our best sales folks, they actually care. Like, they really care about what they're hearing. And it shows up in their activity, in their follow up. Because they're not so weak when we, when we do our, our intake process here at Sterling, the how we think about it is if I'm doing a good job as the intake person, I'm going to, I care enough to make sure I know that you move forward in the best way possible. So even if you didn't sign up with me because, like, I'm going to charge you$150 to meet with, like, my attorney salesperson. I'm going to follow up with you to make sure, like, you move forward and like you're doing some marketing there and like, you're actually not trying to push. You're just trying to have a relationship. I'm trying to care. So like a lot of the follow ups are, oh, I'm, you know, I'm still not sure I want to do this. That's the client's going to say I get to talk to my mother. And I got to talk to my sister about, you know, what's going to happen. So, like, I'll call you back next week if they don't call you back. The follow up should be how did you how did the conversation go with you with your mother and with your sister? And like, how is the how are you feeling? Like, are you are you in a good spot to have resources? Do you need all that stuff? Like it's all from a point of care? mindset. Yeah, 100%. got that credit card ready? Ready to take your money now. Yeah, I know like you see that in the performance people in our sales people that we've had to coach out of that they they don't do as well. And their commissions are low. Yeah. That's, It's so funny how how important sales is to to every industry, but it's so different per industry based on what that interaction and transaction, process is. And, I think it's important that our audience understands that this hiring, this role is crucial. But being able to to find the right person Yeah. time. It's going to take time and like, it's better to not have them than add the wrong person because they're the first person that your brand, your brand is now speaking to that client with. And, so we've gone through, you know, we've spent a lot of time figuring out how to do that at the law firm with how we, you know, we get, I think, our throughput on, intake team members that we hire, it's about 800 applications to one hire. So like we go through a lot of applications to find the right person because like, they're representing our brand, they're the they're now like the first voice and face of this interaction. And like that's a big responsibility. So like take your time. Do it right. Get a good salesperson that truly wants to do this and cares and is aligned with your mission. law firm even find this kind of person? Like what is attracting and finding this talent look like? How did we do it? It's thrilling. I don't I mean, I don't think it's any different than normal recruiting. Like, if you don't have a compelling mission story, you know, have things about your culture on your team, on your like About Us page. If there's not a sense that what you're doing is actually helpful, like, it's going to be harder, and that 800 to 1 might be 12 or 1500 to one and like, no, it's like, oh my God, how am I going to review all these recipes? Like, that's crazy. But we've, we've put in place a bunch of different, personality tests that we know, like, are these nurturing type people or are they over? Are they driving type people? Are they do we have, do they have experience, doing sales in the first place? So we don't typically hire a lot of people that haven't been on the phones before because these are hard. These are, for my experience, being involved with call centers. This is one of the more difficult call center jobs that I would say exists, because you're you're not getting a lot of happy stories on the other side. You're getting a lot of like, super raw people are crying. Sometimes there's deep domestic violence involved, sometimes there's, you know, there's real situations and like that can be super heavy. So, you know, what we found is, you know, there's a personality profile that does really well here because they can care, but they don't bring it home with them because that's really important. We've seen like people bring that like take it home and they're they're feeling depressed and upset and stressed and so there's like a there's a lot of different components to what we've put in place to try to figure out what that is. And then our process for bringing them on is pretty regimented. So the first two weeks, all they're doing is shadowing our best person, like literally that watching them. So Mariel have her screen up, Marie second calls, and then, you know, John sit next to her and just literally watching her do it and listening to the call and like learning that for two weeks. And then the third week they'll start taking they'll start actually taking some calls. And after every call they're debriefing. And then they're kind of starting to get their see likes. And we found there's been lots of instances where in those first two weeks there and they're not attentive, they're not taking it seriously. Like, okay, this isn't this. You know, we missed something in the interview process. This isn't the right person. So, we take the job very seriously, because it means a lot. It means a lot to the business, and it means a lot to the clients. I love it. I'm sitting here thinking like, do this. Do. The normal candidates for this role have prior sales experience? Do we even want them Yeah. They have they typically have previous call center experience. So that'll be where, where it'll come in. Because part of this team is they're actually they're off. They're actually off shore. So like, they're they're not even us based. So like, part of the reason we have such a high application to hire ratio is the first step is they got to submit a video selling me on why I should have a conversation with them. Like that's their that's their first step. And like a bunch of people won't even do that. They'll submit the resume, they'll get the auto response to submit a video, they won't submit a video, or they'll submit a video. And it's a very good it's like, okay, so now we've we got a whole bunch, and, you know, that allows us to like, sign the ones that have the right personality and like, intentions for the job right away. So that's been that's been super helpful. And then obviously when we get into the interview process, we are asking them, we don't care if they have tons of sales experience. It's just we want and we want to make sure they've had the experience of like being in a call center where they're taking calls and executing like that every single day. So if I'm. I'm a small attorney firm, and I'm thinking about, you know, doing this process, I think your point about shadowing is going to be paramount, right? They're going to have to watch you go through the console, have the conversation, build the muscle and repeat that over time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's been we had we went through multiple iterations of that. At first we had tons of documented SOPs and a whole bunch of material that we would like bring them in and give it to them, and then we test them and do all the stuff. And that would take our our ramp. Time for those people was so much longer because then they get on. The phones are like, I don't remember everything I'm supposed to remember. And like, I don't even know how the phone works. Like, I was on about the phone and like I passed those that those tests. But then I use the phone for a week. It's like, how do I make a phone call again? Like, how do I pick it up? Like, how do I how do I make a transfer? So we found pairing a new person up with someone that's doing it really well. You're going to pick up a lot of the nuances. And then after the call, you just you debrief this, when you heard this, this is why I did this. This is, you know, so on and so forth. So it's it's really accelerated the process. But that modeling, I think, is so important. So I think, you know, internally we call it I, I do you watch I do you help like so week one is I do you watch and you're just watching me. The whole time we do is I do. So I'm running the call. But you're entering everything into the call center or into the call flow. Application in Salesforce. So that's that's what we call I do you, help and then we turn into you do I help? So now you're on the call and I'm putting everything into the Salesforce. And then the final step is you're you're doing it independently. do. I watch, Yeah. So. great delegation tool that we use across our organizations here. So. as we're, as we're kind of coming to an end here, I think, I'd like to shift gears a bit and talk to the salespeople. Right. If you're a if you're a sales, if you're in a sales role at a legal organization and, you're looking to level up or you're looking to take that next step, what advice you have for them to continue to hone their skills and become great? So what I'd say is, you know, depending on I'll just take it from, like, assuming you just started, you're kind of in the space and how you want to grow. Like, take it super seriously and, like, you know, there's a there's a video that we give our people in the call center called confessional or amateur. And if you're a professional, like you're going to take all of these interactions seriously. And what that means is you're going to take good notes. You're going to know every single person that you talk to you, you personally want to know what happened to them. Did they did they go forward or did they not? If they didn't, did they get resources that they need to move forward and like take a lot of care for the clients coming in because you're going to build a really strong muscle and then the next opportunity is a non attorney sales role, where you're actually executing the consultation. But that only happens if you've mastered what you need to master in that first role. And we've seen you know, I think we have six, six nine attorney salespeople now on our team at Sterling. They do a bulk of the consultations, probably 60 or 60 or so percent. And they perform just as good, if not better than our attorneys sometimes. So like it's when you compare it, it's kind of fun to see, like how did our attorneys perform and how to our, not attorney salespeople perform. Attorneys generally will perform better if they need more files, but as soon as they're full, they will then actually start performing worse. And the deltas aren't very significant. They're like 3 to 5%. So it's. to, being where your feet are. There. Yeah, exactly. It's exactly that because, you know, attorneys will get real busy. They're candles are get super full if they get a trial or stuff comes up. And now it's like, yeah, I don't really want to do that counsel today. It's optional. Yeah, exactly. Makes sense. Like it's not a bad it's not a bad thing. It's just a human thing. A lot of this is, This has been so helpful. Really appreciate your time and insights. Obviously. And I think if you're listening to this and you're thinking about, you know, do I take the leap and hire an attorney, a salesperson, you can use some of the advice here. If you're already doing it, you know, continue to double down on, on empathy and being present and, and being able to hear people's stories and, and add some care into those interactions. Yeah, I 100% agree. I think it's great advice. Super important. And patience is the key here. So going fast and getting a button to seat is not a good strategy. not going to work long term for sure. Thanks, everyone. Really appreciate your time. if you like to the conversation today about selling in your law firm, make sure to check out this video. We'll make sure to post it in the comments as well. we, hosting an interview, law firm owners every single day help them tell their story is an opportunity to give back to this great community. Thanks everyone and we'll see you next time.
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